I found Christmas

2009 is really ending with a bang. I sprained my ankle last week while running, was really really really mean to someone I should have NOT been mean to (and has kept me from sleeping since), and I got slammed with the flu on Tuesday night. Not exactly the ingredients that make for a festive Christmas. Did I mention that the heat doesn't come on in my apartment in the afternoon or evening? At all.

My dad drove out to my apartment on Wednesday night to rescue me from a freezing apartment and a very very high temperature so I ended up spending all of Christmas at my parents' house. I was worried that I would spend Christmas in bed, incoherent and shivering but fortunately but my fever broke Wednesday night and I ended up with left-over chills and fever on Thursday and a massive massive massive head cold on Christmas Day. Do I have awesome timing or what? :-)

I really missed my grand-parents this year and their absence was really felt. Christmas Eve was just my parents and me, and considering how lousy I felt I was pleased that I stayed awake through dinner. It was like any other night.

We started Christmas off with a game of Scrabble and I am pretty sure we all heard my grand-mother whirling in her grave. My grand-mother was a 35 year school teacher and man did she play a mean game of Scrabble! I remember my grand-mother and brother getting into arguments when I was a kid over proper word usage and rules. Scrabble was not a low key game in my house! I thought it was only fitting that I ended up with the letters to spell out "Fran", my grand-mother's name, in that first game. I totally broke the rules by putting a proper name on the board, but I think that in this case it was ok. It made me unreasonably happy to see her name on my Scrabble tray. I think my grand-mother was definitely with us.

When the rest of the comrades (aka my uncle, brother and brother's girlfriend) came it started to feel like a holiday. Every family is nutty in their own unique and peculiar way, mine included, and it was awesome to be surrounded by these loonies and know that I belong no other place than with them. *That* is what Christmas is all about, I think. Not the rituals, not the gifts, not the food, but spending the time with those who are your family, blood relations or not. Seriously, I think I got warm fuzzies when I realized this and I don't think it was the flu talking :-)

Merry Christmas!